Horse meat scandal: Will we fall out of love with ready meals?

Some beef lasagne has not proved as beefy as advertised (Picture: Reuters)

When it comes to picking out dinner, ready meals are an easy option: quick, minimal effort and cheap, their appeal is self-evident.

An estimated £3.8 billion was spent on ready meals, pies and pasties last year in Britain, according to market researchers Mintel.

Sales were forecast to increase to almost £5bn by 2017, but in the wake of the horse meat scandal, it would appear many of us are going to change our eating habits.

A survey published by Consumer Intelligence this week revealed that two out of three British adults trust food labels less than they did before it emerged that several supposed beef products contained horse meat.

As a nation, we consume more prepared meals than any other in Western Europe – 87 per cent of people eat them here compared to 74 per cent in France and 64 per cent in Italy.

And it seems there is little interest in knowing what goes into our food. A survey by market analysts Mintel found only 39 per cent of people felt it was important to know the ingredients in their food.

With the horse meat scandal set to rumble on, are consumers going to shun ready meals in favour of fresh produce?

The Q Guild, which represents butchers across England, Scotland and Wales, reported last week that some of its members have seen a spike in sales of 20 to 30 per cent.

It is little surprise, according to nutritionist Dr Carina Norris, who said: ‘Really, it’s a trust issue. People are going to be thinking, “What can I trust if I’m not making it from scratch myself?”.

‘It is going to have an impact, especially on the budget brands because that’s where the problem has been found.’

In the squeezed economic climate, budget ready meal ranges have never been more popular – 30 per cent of consumers buy them now compared to 20 per cent in 2008.

Spokesman Richard Dodd said: ‘Supermarkets are telling us there has been no significant change in customers’ buying habits, no significant reduction in customers buying meat products or a shift from one category of meat to another.

‘What retailers have seen is more interest in fresh meat burgers than frozen burgers, but there’s no sense that customers have lost confidence in the products that retailers are offering them.’

Frozen food accounted for 11 per cent in sales of prepared food last year, with purchases of frozen meat and poultry showing a year-on-year increase of 8.4 per cent.

Brian Young, director general at the British Frozen Food Federation, said: ‘Disposable income is very squeezed for a lot of families. Frozen food offers families value and there’s little waste.’

Mr Young rejected the notion that frozen food is of an inferior quality to fresh food, but admitted there could be repercussions from the horse meat scandal.

‘Clearly there’s some risk that it might impact the frozen food market but generally it’s about how do we keep criminals out of the food chain,’ he said.

History gives us mixed messages on how people react to food scares.

In 2008, the year after a foot-and-mouth outbreak in Surrey, only nine per cent of people said they were worried about the disease or mad cow disease, according to Mintel.

Conversely, 49 per cent of people admitted to taking greater care when washing fruit and vegetables after E. Coli outbreaks in 2011.

But in another survey last summer, 30 per cent of people said they preferred whole cuts of meat, seafood and poultry to ensure they knew the food’s origin.

‘You buy a ready meal and by definition that is something you don’t cook, so you don’t know what has gone into it,’ said Kiti Soininen, head of British food and drink research at Mintel.

‘There are long running concerns about do they have a lot of salt or fat in them. That has always been a challenge that ready meals have faced.

‘The horse meat issue is going to put pressure on ready meal makers to provide origins of their food and not just put on the pack that it’s British, but convince consumers that it is actually British.’

As the popularity of ready meals has grown, so too has the choice. Celebrity-endorsed dishes now compete with branded meals and the supermarkets’ own range.

Professor Mike Lean, a nutrition expert at the University of Glasgow, led a study into ready meals from major supermarkets last summer.

Examining energy contents of several common meals across the categories, the study concluded that supermarket ready-meals are ‘nutritionally chaotic’.

The researchers determined the acceptable energy content of a meal should be 500 to 700kcal (kilocalories), about 30 per cent of the Guideline Daily Amount for a woman as stipulated by the Food Standards Agency.

Of the 67 meals tested, 32 did not have enough calories to constitute a meal, while ten had more than 700kcal.

Prof Lean told Metro: ‘It was quite clear that there appeared to be no consistency at all. Some had huge amounts of fat and salt, way more than you were supposed to have in a meal.’

He believes part of the problem stems from the very definition of a ready meal.

‘People who buy ready meals are people in a hurry, people in a hurry are vulnerable and reliant on caterers making them a meal,’ he said.

‘They will buy a ready meal and it is common thinking that it is a meal. If it doesn’t have vegetables in and it doesn’t say you need to have vegetables [alongside it] then people are prepared to eat it as it is.

‘It’s not right to give people meals with no nutritional value.’

As for processed meat, his verdict is damning.

‘The food industry has stepped in to say we will protect these commodities, but I would not trust them and I don’t think anybody should,’ he said.

‘What we are forgetting is we don’t know which bit of the horse has gone in there, it could be anything.’